Should Christians condemn people to Hell?

After answering, explain why

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“All That Matters”
Revelation 4:8 NIV
Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, ’who was, and is, and is to come.”

In church this past Sunday morning, we sang one of my favorite worship songs, “Holy Forever”. As we were singing, I felt a strong reminder by God saying, “Zach, all that matters in life is that you worship Me and focus on Who I Am.” As we continued to sing the song, I felt chills from the reminder that God is absolutely beyond amazing.

The past couple of months I’ve been struggling with so many things on my mind and not completely focusing on positive things. I’ve shared that in the past months, I struggled with some depression and how worship music brought me out of that. Well, the struggle is off and on and I realize that I have to really be intentional big time all the time to make sure I am focusing on God. No matter what is going on in my life, nothing changes how amazing and awesome God is.

While singing this song on Sunday, I was reminded that all that ever matters in life is how amazing and wonderful God is. Nothing in my life compares to that! Does that mean that my struggles and things that are very concerning are not important? No, absolutely not! God certainly cares about all of the things going on. However, when I get so focused on certain things going on in my life and NOT on God, that’s my problem! God has reminded me of that. I need to let go and trust Him 100%. I haven’t been doing that.

All that matters in life is that we focus and worship God. That is where our total focus needs to be, no matter what is going on. Today I am reminded that nothing in all of life is more important than God and me worshipping Him daily. Everything else falls under that, period. Nothing that I am doing means anything if I am not fully focused on serving Him. I need to be locked in and focused every day.

These words from the song captured my attention today:
Your Name is the highest
Your Name is the greatest
Your name stands above them all
All thrones and dominions
All powers and positions
Your Name stands above them all

This is ALL that matters, period. There is so much power behind these words and what they mean. God is above and beyond everything we experience and all we struggle through in life.

If we completely focus on Him, then the rest of life will not overcome us. God is always with us.

So Jesus gave 2 great commandments:

Matthew 22

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

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but then also
Luke 14

26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

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So self denial and self hatred.. but love your neighbors as yourself? How do you love others as yourself when you hate yourself?
I find loving others properly difficult because I have trouble loving myself. It causes me to resent others, including at times God Himself (for creating me) because I resent my own existence.

Maurene Comey, a Manhattan federal prosecutor who worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was abruptly fired on Wednesday by the Trump administration, according to six people with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Comey was told of her firing Wednesday in a letter from a Justice Department official in Washington who cited Article II of the Constitution, which broadly describes the powers of the president, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. She said in her email that the letter did not give a reason for her termination.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, where she has worked for nearly a decade, declined to comment.

“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” she wrote in an email that was circulated to her colleagues within the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan. “Do not let that happen.”

After years of appeals, depositions are underway in the sexual abuse scandal involving Strauss, a former Ohio State University doctor. It has been seven years since the first lawsuits were filed against the university.

Jordan is set to be deposed on Friday in Washington. Former Ohio State Athletic Director Andy Geiger was deposed on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Neither have been charged with any crimes, but many have questioned what they knew about Strauss’ behavior.

The survivors of Strauss kept quiet for decades, internalizing their trauma, but back in 2018, they started talking.

Hundreds of the survivors of the 20-year-long string of sexual assaults by the Ohio State team doctor still have cases against the university pending in federal court.

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Will this be harder to dodge than a Congressional subpoena?

Unbelievably, 48% of Hispanic voters supported Trump in the 2024 election.

Months later, only 35% approve of him. While I am sorry that this dawning of awareness did not happen earlier, I understand it completely.

Whether the Hispanic voter is an immigrant, a first-generation American, or possibly a second-generation American, I am sure that they realize exactly what life conditions they were fleeing, or how desperate they were.

Very few "waited in line." Most were grandfathered in under Reagan's amnesty. They themselves (or their parents) did exactly what many undocumented immigrants do today, and they were not punished.

And what about the Cubans? They know what it was like to be a refugee fleeing communism. I wonder what they think about Trump's lies about the Haitian refugees--"they're eating the dogs!" I wonder what they think about refugee status being cancelled--when the refugees have no home to return to?

I can empathize because my grandparents fled poverty in Ireland...but that was in the early 20th century. How must these immigrants (or first-generation) or refugees must feel--with the hunger, fear, and uncertainty embedded in their vestigial memories? They understand what a president born with a platinum spoon in his mouth doesn't. They know the truth. And that knowledge should forever disaqualify the people with ICE on their shirts and their leaders with ICE in their veins.

Archbishop Alexios blesses the bodies of Saad Salameh and Foumia Ayyad, killed earlier in an Israeli strike that hit the Holy Family church in Gaza City, during their funeral ceremony at the Saint Porphyrius Church on July 17, 2025. An Israeli strike on Gaza's only Catholic church killed three people on July 17, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said, as Israel said it "never targets" religious sites and regretted any harm to civilians. | OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images

The Israeli military will investigate reports that a tank strike on the sole Catholic church in Gaza killed three people and injured several others amid the war with Hamas, vowing to publish the results of the probe amid criticism from Catholic leaders.

In a statement Thursday, the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem decried the strike at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, which has sheltered hundreds of people since the war began.

Father Gabriel Romanelli, the parish priest and confidant of the late Pope Francis, is among those who have been injured. Video shared online shows the priest sitting with his leg bandaged, while photos show damage to the church's roof, with a large chunk missing near a stone cross.

Continued below.

Sadly, this is the present reality in the USA, and perhaps in other world nations, but not just among the people of the world who have never made professions of faith in Jesus Christ, but this is going on within the gatherings of what are called “churches,” and among those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, including many pastors of churches, too. They know about God. They know about Jesus. Many of them have read the Scriptures. And some of them have been taught the true gospel. But…

So many of them have rejected the God of the Bible, and his teachings, for they want to live in ungodliness and in unrighteousness, according to their own sinful passions and desires. It isn’t that they don’t know the truth about God and what he requires of us, but some of them end up making up their own version of God which suits their sinful lifestyles, who does not judge them for their wrongdoing. So, they willfully block out and ignore the truth that they know so that they can live however they want to live, in practice.

Many of them who make up their own god to suit their own desires are those who are morally unclean, who are living in sexual immorality, in idolatry, in adultery, and some of them in homosexuality. Among them are those who are manipulators, liars, cheats, malicious, untrustworthy, and egocentric, who fake their Christianity to be acceptable in certain circles, but who buy into a false gospel which grants them permission to live however they want, and to continue living in immorality and in taking advantage of the weak.

So, the Scriptures speak out against such sinful practices as these, and they tell us the truth of what God requires of us who profess the name of Jesus. They do not condone such wicked behavior as this, but they pronounce judgment against such behavior, and against those who practice living immoral lives while ignoring what the Scriptures teach. For the Scriptures condemn idolatry, adultery, sexual immorality, lying, cheating, stealing, and the like. And they call us to genuine repentance and to obedience to God.

And yet many people calling themselves “Christians” are ignoring the teachings of the Scriptures on what must be put out of our lives, and on what we must put on in our lives in place of that which must be forsaken. For many of them are accepting a false gospel which convinces them that all they have to do is profess faith in Jesus, and now they can live however they want to live. But God’s word teaches us that if sin is what we practice, and not obedience to God, that we will not inherit eternal life with God.

So, please be students of the Scriptures who study them in the correct context, who are putting the teachings which are for us, the church, into daily practice, by the Spirit, in the power of God, by faith in Jesus Christ.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John 6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]

Oh, to Be Like Thee, Blessed Redeemer

Lyrics by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1897
Music by W. J. Kirkpatrick, 1897

Oh, to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh, to be like Thee! full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wandering sinner to find.

O to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,
Holy and harmless, patient and brave;
Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,
Willing to suffer others to save.

O to be like Thee! while I am pleading,
Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love;
Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,
Fit me for life and Heaven above.

Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,
Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

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They Exchange the Truth for a Lie
An Original Work / July 17, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

I like a few ministries and listen everyday to several. Most of them have so much money now that when they travel they fly business class and stay at great hotels.
They go to Africa and take 10 friends along with them and don't pay a dime of their own money. They build a 20 million dollar bldg and have it paid for on opening day. I give the 10 dollars now and then. I wonder if that's too much.

Patience and godliness. Two deal breakers for those in search of contentment. For this life does not offer a lot of either, especially godliness. But, no matter what stage of growth a convert is, ,if after a time of sowing to the Spirit like Paul (Romans 7:19), during which there is clearly no free will, but the mind of the flesh still remains hostile to any suggestion. But, after a season, the joy and peace he sought grows and breaks forth and also becomes accompanied with righteousness or, blessed into the Kingdom of God.

Who is it but the child of God that waits out that season to draw near and commune with the Holy Spirit of ''liberty'' (free will)?

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. (John 1:12)

What do I think? Is it not conditional on the Father's timeframe, and not ours?/.

In Bob Dylan’s song “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” from his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Dylan lamented the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. While Dylan’s song specifically addresses Evers’ murder, it has broader lessons for the current immigration crisis. Much of the dispute about immigration and deportation is nothing more than partisan posturing, with immigrants — both documented and otherwise — caught in the crossfire of a cynical political war.

Medgar Evers was a decorated World War II veteran and 1952 graduate of historically Black Alcorn A&M College, now known as Alcorn State University. In 1954, after the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Evers applied to the University of Mississippi Law School but was denied admission because of his race. In November of that year, he became the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi. In that role, Evers led the campaign against racist Jim Crow laws by organizing boycotts and helping to set up new regional chapters of the NAACP throughout Mississippi.

Byron De La Beckwith was also a decorated World War II veteran, honorably discharged in 1945 after being wounded in the Pacific theater. After the war he settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, with his wife and young son. In 1954, after the Brown decision, De La Beckwith joined his local White Citizens’ Council, a white supremacist group similar to the Ku Klux Klan, which he later also joined. The White Citizens’ Counsel, which boasted about 60,000 members throughout the South, was dedicated to opposing racial integration in schools and other public institutions.

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Following an airstrike against the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic Church in Gaza, which left at least two dead on Thursday, Pope Leo XIV issued an urgent call for an immediate ceasefire.

In a telegram signed on the pope’s behalf by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the pontiff expressed his “deep sadness” over the military attack and offered his prayers for “the consolation of those who are mourning and for the healing of the wounded.”

“Pope Leo renews his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation, and lasting peace in the region,” the message stated.

Finally, the Holy Father entrusted the souls of the deceased “to the loving mercy of Almighty God” and assured his “spiritual closeness” to all those affected.

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In 1873, Charles Finney wrote to pastors challenging them to raise the moral standards of the nation through preaching.

He concluded: “If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.”

In 1980, a very similar argument was raised by Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and other leading pastors as they launched the Moral Majority. Churches had been lured into silence on moral issues that were prevalent in politics, and we were reaping unwelcome consequences from our inaction. Cal Thomas and I were both involved in leadership positions in the Moral Majority in 1980 and were—and I believe, still are—friends.

However, Cal’s recent column decries the idea that pastors exercise their right to fully preach about moral and political issues, along with giving their candid views on political candidates who have such a significant impact on these issues.

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The family of Chase Childers, a former professional baseball player and police officer with the Cobb County Police Department in Georgia, is asking for prayers after he drowned Sunday while trying to save five others from drowning on Pawleys Island in South Carolina. He was 38.

“Words are hard to find at this moment. We deeply appreciate all the prayers, love, and support as our family, particularly his wife and three children, attempt to navigate life without Chase,” Jordan Hester Wicker wrote in a statement on Facebook on behalf of Childers’ family on Tuesday.

Childers played for North Cobb Christian High School and Georgia State Universitybefore he was picked up by the Baltimore Orioles in 2009, WMBF News reported. He later played in the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league system, according to Major League Baseball.

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Trey Gibson, the fun-loving associate pastor of families at First Baptist Church of Dothan, Alabama, has been fired following his arrest for leaving one of his preschool-aged children alone in a vehicle while he drank and dined for hours in a bar and restaurant.

Eyewitnesses told Dothan Police that Gibson, a married father of two, left his child, who is younger than 5, in his SUV while he drank at a bar last Saturday into early Sunday, according to News 4. After leaving the bar, Gibson drove across the parking lot to a 24-hour restaurant and left the child alone again.

Lt. Scott Owens of the Dothan Police Department told USA TODAY that a concerned patron told police that a child was left unattended in a vehicle.

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Morality is what we do between one another, but godliness is what we do between God and ourselves. Morality can be a possible indication of one being a Christian, but godliness confirms it. One can be morally-centered but not be godly; and one who is godly will be morally-cantered.

It’s one of the most significant blessings that God, receiving the believer, does not require works or morality to be saved; but in time morality and works will become prominent to the believer. Nobody knows and does the Word at the outset of salvation, but must be patient with God while He “conforms” us (Rom 8:29; 2Co 3:18; Phl 2:13).

I would imagine that there will always be those who conceive that doing good is received of God, but Scripture says “to them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled” (Tit 1:15). Thus nothing, concerning an unbeliever, can possibly be good, as far as God is concerned.

Of course we’re already aware that the Lord Jesus had foreknowledge that the majority of mankind will not choose His “Way” (Matt 7:13, 14; Act 19:9 – NKJV); but He chose to create everything for those He knew would follow Him.

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – A Cameroonian priest has blasted President Paul Biya for seeking an eighth consecutive term of office.

The Cameroon president, who is now 92 and has been in power for 43 years, announced on X – formerly known as Twitter – that he will be seeking re-election when Cameroonians go to the polls on October 12.

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I found an advertisement for an old grocery store with a very Catholic theme on it. Trying to figure out the language it’s written in. Can anyone help?

Pope Leo XIV pledged to work to “pursue the path of unity and fraternal charity” in a meeting in Castel Gandolfo with Orthodox and Catholic clergy from the United States.

The clergy were on the pilgrimage “From Rome to New Rome” and includes fifty Greek Orthodox, Byzantine Catholic, and Latin Catholic pilgrims from the U.S., and includes Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey.

This year marks the 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The first Ecumenical Council took place in 325, and went against the Arian heresy, which denied the true divinity of Jesus Christ. This year also was one of the few where the Western Churches and Eastern Churches marked the same day as Easter Sunday.

Leo said it was “significant” that the pilgrimage marks the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.

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The Holy Family Church in Gaza was struck by an Israeli attack on Thursday, with the strike resulting in injuries among civilians present at the historic church.

The direct strike killed two people — Saad Issa Kostandi Salameh and Foumia Issa Latif Ayyad — as confirmed by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem a few hours after the attack.

The patriarchate stressed that it was praying for the repose of the souls of the dead and for an end to what it called this “barbaric war.”

According to press reports, several other civilians sustained moderate to severe injuries, while the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was wounded by shrapnel in his leg.

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As Undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Sister Nathalie Becquart now has a mandate to take all the putrid fruits of the Synod and "to implement those fruits with creativity, in the diversity of the context of the local Churches.” She and the Synodal teams are not called to make the local dioceses and eparchies more holy, orthodox, or fervent. Instead (as described below), Sister Becquart wants to compel each local church to experimentally “listen to the Spirit” to determine how to become more Synodal.

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The revival of deification theology in the Catholic Church has big implications, from ecumenism to AI.

When Grace Simcox came across the concept of deification last year, the Catholic theology student thought she might be dealing with something more pagan than Christian.

The Franciscan University undergrad was debating her now-boyfriend, an Eastern Orthodox catechumen, and wasn’t sure if his constant emphasis on how the Christian life was aimed at theosis, or becoming like God, squared with her Catholic commitments — or if it did at all.

“
At first, it seemed provocative and borderline mythological,” she said.

But after turning to Scripture, the Church Fathers, and especially the medieval Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, Simcox discovered that deification wasn’t merely compatible with her Catholic faith — it was one of its most profound and essential truths.

Simcox isn’t the only Catholic to have made this discovery. Over the past three decades or so, the Catholic Church has undergone a profound recovery of the theology of deification, also known as divinization. The ancient approach to the Christian life emphasizes that salvation isn’t merely about being freed from sin, but is more fundamentally about being united to God and sharing in his divine life.

Although never lost, the theology of deification had long been overshadowed by more juridical approaches to salvation which emphasized concepts like expiation of guilt and deliverance from punishment. Promoted by figures like St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 12th century, juridical accounts became especially dominant in the West during the Reformation, as Protestant emphases on justification prompted the Church to use similar legalistic frameworks in defense of its doctrines.

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